Yet Another Veil Thread

Many have opined that the proliferation of veils has had negative repercussions for balance. That's probably true, but I think, for the most part, individuals with veils are a minor problem.

The bigger problem seems, to me, to be that this proliferation has lead to a somewhat novel phenomenon of raiding parties that are entirely veiled. In the past, you'd have a few veiled people in a raiding party, but could follow the bulk of the party by tracking the ones without veils.

The only real solution we have right now is to rely on people on our side who have veils. It's already happened a few times since I came back from dormancy that we've had a fully-veiled enemy group raiding the city and no veiled citymates around, which leads to tremendously silly situations where half a dozen people are raiding our city and we can't do anything about it without combing every room of the city by hand (in which case they just pop over to a new location and try again). The alternative, when there are veils present, is usually for citymates to act as automatic radar stations, triggering to repeat locations to channels at regular intervals or, worse, offering automatic replies with locations to tells in certain forms (this latter one seems to be common among veil owners now). Worse yet, both of these can and are done while AFK, making the "radar station" metaphor even more unfortunately apt. I think there's general agreement that this is precisely the sort of automation that's sort of distasteful from an immersion perspective.

The suggestion then, is to make veils stop working when the veil owner is being followed. It makes a sort of sense, since their location is, in an abstract sense, being constantly "revealed" to someone. More importantly, it means we can't end up with entirely-invisible raiding groups nearly so easily. Better yet, it affords defenders an active defence against veils - the more sneaky defenders can try to follow veil users in order to negate their veil.

The suggestion then, is to make veils stop working when the veil owner is being followed. It makes a sort of sense, since their location is, in an abstract sense, being constantly "revealed" to someone. More importantly, it means we can't end up with entirely-invisible raiding groups nearly so easily. Better yet, it affords defenders an active defence against veils - the more sneaky defenders can try to follow veil users in order to negate their veil.

Can't the follower report the location, in essence doing the same thing?

The suggestion then, is to make veils stop working when the veil owner is being followed. It makes a sort of sense, since their location is, in an abstract sense, being constantly "revealed" to someone. More importantly, it means we can't end up with entirely-invisible raiding groups nearly so easily. Better yet, it affords defenders an active defence against veils - the more sneaky defenders can try to follow veil users in order to negate their veil.

Can't the follower report the location, in essence doing the same thing?

They could, but the intent was to try to propose a solution that didn't involve automated reporting. Also, that's sort of just a fringe benefit of it - the main idea is that someone who has followers can be tracked, so people leading raid groups are visible to location abilities.

The suggestion then, is to make veils stop working when the veil owner is being followed. It makes a sort of sense, since their location is, in an abstract sense, being constantly "revealed" to someone. More importantly, it means we can't end up with entirely-invisible raiding groups nearly so easily. Better yet, it affords defenders an active defence against veils - the more sneaky defenders can try to follow veil users in order to negate their veil.

Can't the follower report the location, in essence doing the same thing?

They could, but the intent was to try to propose a solution that didn't involve automated reporting. Also, that's sort of just a fringe benefit of it - the main idea is that someone who has followers can be tracked, so people leading raid groups are visible to location abilities.

Hmm. That would create a situation where veils would discourage interaction, such as group bashing/etc. I really dislike that. We need more grouping, not less, in terms of things like that.

The suggestion then, is to make veils stop working when the veil owner is being followed. It makes a sort of sense, since their location is, in an abstract sense, being constantly "revealed" to someone. More importantly, it means we can't end up with entirely-invisible raiding groups nearly so easily. Better yet, it affords defenders an active defence against veils - the more sneaky defenders can try to follow veil users in order to negate their veil.

That seems an extremely OP way to negate a 2,000 cr artefact's usefulness. Phased serpent decides to follow you while you're bashing and you don't notice, and suddenly everyone who has farsee can see you.

@Skye: If it's just delayed then there's very little point in owning a veil at all. I bought mine for two reasons. There were people with veils that I wanted/needed to be able to find, and I wanted the ability to be unfindable to the majority of the playerbase so that if I wanted to do something without being disturbed at all, I could do precisely that.

Personally I'd be ok with veils not working (to hide your location?) inside cities and order temples if you're enemied to that organisation, but I can't see any reason for them not to work elsewhere.

While I understand the frustration, you have to also understand that what you're essentially asking is for the admin to remove a feature quite a few people have paid a significant price for. That sounds like a terrible business move, and a great way to anger a lot of customers. I know I would be upset if something I purchased just stopped working. Yes, balance has to be considered, but perhaps it would make more sense to look at individual scenarios that it's particularly imbalancing and fix those, instead of just blanket destroying something that people have put a lot of money/time into acquiring.

So to that effect, what scenarios exactly do you feel are so extremely imbalanced by veils? If it's raids, perhaps summoning a spark should announce to the city that a spark is being summoned in a particular room (similar to totem smudging). Guards already cry out when they're being attacked.

@Trevize: I don't think it really discourages grouping. If you're grouped and not everyone has a veil, this change matters relatively little since the group can already be tracked. If you were going to group, but decide not to because it would negate the advantage conferred by the fact that your entire group has veils, I have very little sympathy. I don't think that's a kind of grouping we should be promoting.

@Alyssea: ENT and GROUP are completely free. If a phased serpent is following you and you don't notice, that's sort of your own fault and, as Trevize pointed out, it's already possible for said serpent to just set up triggers to relay location.

@Skye: I think that's going rather far overboard. That's a tremendous and extremely general nerf to veils.

@Antonius: Likewise, I think the idea of veils not working in cities or temples is going way, way overboard. It also doesn't help with border raids, forest conflict, etc. Having veils not work while being followed doesn't cut very deeply into your stated reason for owning a veil. If justification is a problem, that's pretty easy: "veils magically make you difficult to track, but the magic only works if you're traveling alone". Or say something like "the psychic energy of an entire group together negates the concealment afforded by veils".

@Penwize: I'm not really asking for a feature to be removed. I'm not saying veils shouldn't do what veils do on an individual level. I'm saying that entire groups of veiled raiders are becoming a problem. It's not entirely unlike, say, trample-vivi or any of the old instant-death combinations - the abilities aren't a problem independently and they don't need nerfs - it's the combinations that need fixing. The combination of a whole group of veiled enemies is problematic. Calling it "blanket destroying" the functionality of veils is a pretty incredible stretch and I think I can be fairly confident in assuming that veils weren't implemented with the oracular prediction that we would be seeing entire veiled groups (at this point, almost every raid I end up defending against involves more veiled attackers than not). Summoning spark giving a location would be a nice step in the right direction, but, again, that doesn't account for border raids, city raids that don't involve city destruction, forest conflict, or any other type of group conflict (all of which account for a rather large portion of all group conflict, particularly since city destruction is limited to a small number of rooms per day).

So far, I only like the anti-Veil city improvement. That would be a neat way to make raids by veiled groups more fun and less frustrating for the motley crew of defenders trying to track them down, while still preserving the understandably powerful functionality of an understandably expensive artefact in all other cases.

No, it wouldn't help for border raids or exterminations, but if they're raiding your border, you know about where they are, and exterminations are a whole different can of worms.

Make it two edged, like the Orb of Confinement, so citizens' veils wouldn't work in-city either, if it was left on.

-- Grounded in but one perspective, what we perceive is an exaggeration of the truth.

Its a big discouragement to group combat. When the refugees would raid us, upwards of half of their group would be undetectable to us, so if we had X defenders and we were able to detect X-3 raiders, then that was a big sign not to engage because we would have to assume we were outnumbered.

The "Surprise! We've got +5" thing is a cool mechanic for a raid every once in awhile, but when you have to deal with it every single day, its not fun at all.

Everybody has been complaining about veils for years upon years. Nobody likes them, but at this point they're an evil in Achaea that's probably never going to go away. With the current state of the game, there's simply no way for the administration to remove veils even if they wanted to. What do you want them to do? Offer a cash refund to everyone who has a veil? So far, noone in this thread has offered any decent alternative, and that's because there isn't one. People have been complaining about this for years and nothing has changed because there's nothing that can really be done. Veils are too much a part of the game.

You might as well go ahead and get out your checkbook and write a check for ~$550, or just learn to cope.

About the only suggestion in this thread that's viable is detecting Veil users when they're in enemy cities (and probably forest if you're forest enemied and in a forest), which is something we can consider, though no promises one way or another.

Veils are a huge problem in other IRE games too, and there has been repeated posts on different forums about the imbalances they create. The veil is an artifact that messes up the action-consequence balance insofar that it makes it impossible to get even with offenders unless you purchase as 2,000 credit artefact. You can go spy on people with no consequence. You can go kill people who do not possess veils and you won't have to fear retaliation from them. You can be a jerk in so many ways and unless the other person has a veil, they will not get even. It just makes it so frustrating when you're on the receiving end, being attacked without having any chance of retaliation (outside the scope of letting someone else do your dirty business) is annoying to the point where it makes you feel helpless. I think Achaea (and the other IRE games) would be better off without the veil and possibly even gem of cloaking.

The IRE games are based inherently around interaction, with friends and foes alike. Having no chance of finding people - or people having any chance of finding you - just makes interaction impossible. Most muds do their best to bring people together, not to keep them apart. I mean, you're not always interested in fighting or roleplaying or whatever, but like I already said: sometimes your actions are meant to have consequences. Also, people paying 2,000 credits doesn't necessarily mean that the artefact itself contributes to the well-being of the game. Delete it, offer full refunds (as has been for other artefacts in other IRE games), and have a better game than you had before.

Hmm. Too many veils in the same room should cause an explosion. The veils start trembling from interference overload. Five seconds later if there are still too many people gathered, everyone goes boom.

I don't really understand how making veils completely useless in cities (and possibly forests) is a smaller nerf than making people being followed detectable. That would preclude individuals infiltrating cities or walking around forests and the like more secretly, which seems like exactly what veils should be for.

Being detectable in cities seems like a comparatively gigantic nerf to veils. If that's the only option, I guess I'd rather see nothing changed.

I have to agree with Tael there, making veils not work in cities is a huge nerf that removes a lot of veil's current usefulness. It couldn't be a blanket change, or even a city improvement (that would become an always-on blanket change). But here's an idea for something more interesting, and a bit more balanced:

Have an item sold in cities that can be tossed into the city's font to fire a big flare. When it fires, it gives an area-wide message of a big magic flare going off, and then 10 seconds afterward veils stop working in the city for a few minutes. Make the item cost a reasonable amount so it can't just be spammed.

I have to agree with Tael there, making veils not work in cities is a huge nerf that removes a lot of veil's current usefulness. It couldn't be a blanket change, or even a city improvement (that would become an always-on blanket change). But here's an idea for something more interesting, and a bit more balanced:

Have an item sold in cities that can be tossed into the city's font to fire a big flare. When it fires, it gives an area-wide message of a big magic flare going off, and then 10 seconds afterward veils stop working in the city for a few minutes. Make the item cost a reasonable amount so it can't just be spammed.

I like the general idea, though I have no idea how you could balance the cost such that it would be reasonable to use, but not reasonable to spam. If it's too expensive to spam, it's probably too expensive to use at all and if it isn't, people are going to spam it. Also, if it's something that is unreasonable to spam, raiding parties will just go in, wait for people to use the flare, leave for a few minutes, then come back completely unhindered. Better would be to put in an a more substantial drawback - like revealing veiled people actually interferes with defending.

It might work to just make an analogue of the summon spark process that you do at the font, so the cost isn't gold, but coordination and manpower. That way you could technically spam it, but coordinating and having the people standing at the font to spam it would mean no one is actually going out and dealing with the invaders. (Edit: I'd also like to see something like this in that it requires explicit coordination, which is always good for things involving group combat.)

I have to agree with Tael there, making veils not work in cities is a huge nerf that removes a lot of veil's current usefulness. It couldn't be a blanket change, or even a city improvement (that would become an always-on blanket change). But here's an idea for something more interesting, and a bit more balanced:

In regard to the city improvement option, I'd be interested to see if any city actually kept it on. We all assume that a city would, making it un-infiltratable, but if it also stopped citizens' veils from working, I bet there'd be enough fuss, griping, and hand-wringing that it might only get flipped on in raids.

-- Grounded in but one perspective, what we perceive is an exaggeration of the truth.

While I understand the frustration, you have to also understand that what you're essentially asking is for the admin to remove a feature quite a few people have paid a significant price for. That sounds like a terrible business move, and a great way to anger a lot of customers. I know I would be upset if something I purchased just stopped working. Yes, balance has to be considered, but perhaps it would make more sense to look at individual scenarios that it's particularly imbalancing and fix those, instead of just blanket destroying something that people have put a lot of money/time into acquiring.

So to that effect, what scenarios exactly do you feel are so extremely imbalanced by veils? If it's raids, perhaps summoning a spark should announce to the city that a spark is being summoned in a particular room (similar to totem smudging). Guards already cry out when they're being attacked.

Just as a counterpoint, artefacts that detract from other players' experience are awful.

Examples of this include:

Thoth's Fang, for making non-artefact dirks suck in comparison, thus weakening non-artied serpents rather significantly in 1v1. They're a bigger leap in attack speed than even Blademaster bands, except serpents (being a momentum-based class) rely on speed significantly, while Blademasters can at least pick away at limbs regardless of their attack speed.

Artefact wings. I'd be cool with them if they just functioned as a convenient travel power, but they give people a place to escape/hide from people without wings.

And finally, veils. I find it amusing when people defend the value of veils as a major reason to avoid changing them, considering their only functionality is to devalue other players' capabilities. They make other peoples' locating abilities useless, except for the singular exception that they also make other peoples' veils useless as well.

The fact that these artefacts exist is, in my opinion, a disservice to the player-base at large, and a reduction of Achaea's value as a game. I personally won't support pay-for-perk things (I like pay-for-cool-things, and might be okay with pay-for-convenience things, but I hate things that cost money for a mechanical edge on other people), but if they never affected me, I probably wouldn't care that much. However, they often do, and the above examples are particularly blatant about it.

I worked hard to get my veil, mostly with ic earned credits. One of the reasons I got it was so I could get into enemy cities to do bad things. If it suddenly stopped working for that purpose, I would be one very pissy player.